Sunday, February 2, 2014

Copyright School: How To Copyright Your Music

You’ve been playing around writing songs and making beats for some time and now you are looking into taking your music career to the next level. The 1st thing you want to startdoing is to copyright your music. And in order to do so you must know and understand what a copyright is and how it works.

Definition Of Copyright

The legal definition of copyright is ” the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc. What this does is give creators exclusive rights to their work. Think of it like this, if you created something and everybody had the right to use it without paying you, less people would create anything at all.

What Can I Copyright?

In order for you to copyright a work it must be original (not copied from something else) and sufficient enough to be considered as a work.

HowTo Get A Copyright

Under U.S copyright law, as soon as you make a tangible copy of something, you have a copyright. Tangible meaning something you can touch. Many people think you have to register in Washington to GET a copyright, although there are some important rights you get when you register, but securing a copyright isn’t one of them.

What Are All The Rights I Get?

When you have copyright to a work, you are entitled to the following rights at no extra charge:

Reproduce the work

Distribute copies of the work

Perform the work publicly

Make a derivative work

So if you are a producer or singer/songwriter its important to understand what a copyright is and how it is used. This is just the basic break down of what a copyright is and how it works. If you write a song or make a beat you own copyrights to your work as soon as you make a tangible copy. Now to protect your copyright you would want to register your song(s) with the Library of Congress.

If you are a singer/songwriterPA Form
If you are a producer/beat makerSR Form

If you would like to know more about copyrights visit www.copyright.gov/ for a deeper look into the world of copyrights.